


Mystery Meat

by silverpaper_toffeepaper



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Author Is Terrible At Video Games, Canon Has Plot Holes, Gen, Self-Insert, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27079300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverpaper_toffeepaper/pseuds/silverpaper_toffeepaper
Summary: One night an office worker passed out on her bathroom floor. She woke up in a spaceship, three inches shorter and hair buzzed to stubble, with a nurse calling her by the wrong name and asking how she felt after six hundred years in cryo.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	1. Hypnogogic Jerk

**Author's Note:**

> Because I have spent waaaaay too much time speculating about stupidly minute details of Mass Effect.

Technicians Yacopo Bucayu and Betsy Culbrier were some of the first on the _Hyperion_ to awaken from cryo. Four hours into the work of pod retrieval, revival, and processing, the medical bay staff has settled into a rhythm. 

Check cryopod data for irregularities (thus far, always none). Match name and number from pod to file. Read the medical record while the pod cycles through the revival process, making note of allergies, injuries, or other concerns that might require additional scrutiny. When the patient wakes, tolerate their jokes while making a last check of their vitals. Have the attending sign off, then hand the patient a cup of coffee and tell them to check their omnitool for their duties. 

This one's record says she's young, healthy, a former Alliance peacekeeper. Citadel-raised, solid biotics. Shouldn't be any problems.

Sara Ryder sits up, scrunches her snub nose, and mumbles, "Ohh, this is a weird dream," before she pokes herself in the eye. "Ow. No glasses. Oh god, do I have default Sara face?" She rubs her hands all over her scalp. "I'm bald? I guess there's hope. I'm so glad I have tits still. Where is my jetpack?"

"Welcome to the Andromeda galaxy," Betsy says loudly. On her datapad, she taps _[PAGE ATTENDING DR.]_. "Pathfinder team, huh? You're gonna find us a nice tropical beach planet?" 

"They're all murder planets right now, sorry. Fixable ones. Holy shit, I am _built_. Look at these guns," she says, flexing. "This is sick."

Her voice is actually fairly quiet, but the revival work has been so monotonous that the every other technician in the room can tell the rhythm is off. They're only doing the barest appearance of work while eyeing Betsy, Yacopo, and their problem patient, who has stuck her leg straight out to one side to marvel at her own flexibility.

Yacopo, the designated muscle of the two, clears his throat and leans in. It gets Sara's attention and blocks her view of the coffee cart while Betsy wheels it out of reach. "Take it easy," he says. "You remember your name, date of birth, location? Track my finger, please."

She yawns, straightens up. "I'm not doing anything easy, I'm a badass space marine. Sara Ryder. I have a twin, he has my birthday. Can I see him before he gets microwaved?" 

Despite her loopy demeanor, she follows his instructions for the reflex tests, and her eyes track motion and light without issue. When he looks away to check her vitals on the scanner, Sara leaps up and trots away without a wobble. 

"DOCTOR LEXI, hi!" says Sara, "I gotta save Scott and see if he's ugly! Do I look like him? Tell me no. I want to be cute."

"I don't have a medical opinion on that," Dr. T'Perro says, then holds out a hand to shake. On reflex, Sara clasps it, and bursts out laughing when T'Perro takes her whole arm in both hands and steers her towards a bench, the two technicians flanking them just behind. "Sara, could you please take a seat while I check some things?" 

Instead, Sara stretches up on tiptoe and cranes her neck to peek over the doctor's shoulder, where a different pair of cryo technicians has collected their professionalism for long enough to set down a new cryopod and flee. "That's him? Lordy. He doesn't shave his neck. That is _tragic._ " 

Yacopo can't hide his laugh this time. "I'll tell him you said that," he says.

Meanwhile, T'Perro steps back to scan Sara herself. Betsy angles her notes away where the doctor can read it. 

"When is the space fungus?" Sara asks. "We have to grab Scott's pod before--"

Whatever else she was planning to say is cut off by a crunching, metallic groan reverberating through the ship's frame, silencing all conversation. 

Betsy, visibly shaking, whispers, "What was that?"

Another, longer groan, and then gravity tilts and fails. 

\---

I lead a boring life, but I often have vivid dreams. They're flavored by whatever I've been reading or watching, and about half the time I _know_ I'm dreaming and roll with the storyline until waking. Why be a broke cubicle jockey when I can be a werewolf, or take flight, or afford new shoes? 

It's not a surprise to wake up in what is obviously the _Hyperion_ cryo defrost room. I liked Andromeda, and being a professional badass with free healthcare would be exactly what I would fixate on during an expensive brush with death. 

It's annoying not to have a jetpack or my squad. Still kinda fun to escape reality while I can. This is an unusually high-definition dream. I can smell bleach, coffee, and fresh plastic. The bristly sensation of my own hair stubble is mesmerizing. My hands have stubby fingers, with a different arrangement of scars and nails painted robin's egg blue, to match the Initiative logo. 

And through it all is the mundanity of a perfunctory doctor visit. When I get bored, I dart off to see Lexi T'Perro. An alien! Of course I want to talk to someone who's not a boring old human, and see my nice dream-brother, and move the plot of the dream along to the fun parts. 

The point is I'm groggy, distracted, and not taking the dream seriously. Not until gravity fails, then jolts back on, and slams me into the floor. 

I hate freefall. In dreams, I can eat, read, and (to a degree) feel pain. The one thing that never, ever fails to knock me awake is falling. 

Except I hit the ground hard, and I'm still here. Even when the extremely heavy cryo pod slams into me, and everything whites out in agony, I am still here, and everyone is still calling me Sara Ryder. 

_So I did die,_ I think, quite clearly. 

I'll forgive those technicians for sedating me.


	2. Body Mapping

My mouth feels sticky, medicinal tasting. When I open my eyes, I see the sterile brightness of the plastic-and-metal room, the strangely-dressed medical staff that aren't all human, and I remember everything. My life, my death, and this dream that isn't a dream. This cutscene that I'd blundered into. 

There's a tablet clipped to my bed's foldout table. It's open to a chart. **PATIENT: Sara Elizabeth Ryder [human]**. The date is ridiculous. Everything on it is ridiculous.

The birthday. Age. Height and weight. Birthplace. Next of kin (Alec Franklin Ryder, father, and Scott Harold Ryder, brother). No known health conditions. Mods and implants are listed as 'see attached'. The photo on the chart is from a military ID. She's baby-faced (although not quite default-Sara-faced, thank god). Dark hair, dark eyes are her only similarities to the face I think of as mine.

The hands holding the tablet are a stranger's hands. They are blunt-fingered, the nails painted blue. They set the tablet back down on the table easily. 

There's no twinge in the left index finger where I'd been bitten by a rat, no scar in the thumb web where I'd tried to slice a bagel wrong. Just the ache of what promises to be some spectacular bruises across my shoulders and hip, where a sliding cryo pod had flattened me. 

The coffee smell from earlier is stronger, but stale, and there's a faint odor of burnt plastic in the air. The effortless professionalism of earlier has evaporated: everyone is bunched up around the edges of the room, shoulders tight in their silly-shaped lab coats as they murmur together, some of them treating people with burns and scrapes. 

Their chatter is subdued. I can only catch the sharper, stressed sounds: "Habitat 7", "shuttle crash", "Nexus". Someone is drilling a wall in a neighboring room, occasionally pausing to set something heavy down with a thunk. 

One of the technicians from earlier, the woman, is reading something on a panel of light over her wrist. An omnitool. Hard light technology, an impractical trope of science fiction, and she uses it with the worried glare of someone reading a rent increase notice from their landlord. 

She's chubbier than anyone in-game I remember seeing, her dark hair threaded with white and her uniform a size too big. The variations of real, three-dimensional people are obvious now. Even her shoes aren't uniform, gray with purple details.

The technician catches my eye, smooths her expression, and folds away the light display over her wrist as she scurries over. "Hey, how are you feeling? Remember me?"

"My cryo doctor," I tell her, pasting on a smile. I feel numb, skin to muscle to bones, none of them mine. This face can form a smile and tell people what they want to hear. "Sorry, I didn't catch your name. I was really out of it, I apologize." 

"No apologies necessary. Just doing my job," she replies. "I'm Betsy. Can you tell me your name, date of birth, location?" 

"Sara Ryder. April 28th, 2163, born on the Citadel. Now we’re on the Hyperion, in the Heleus Cluster." In a video game. "Thanks for being patient with me."

"Looks like your body chemistry just didn't like cryo that much," Betsy says, grinning. "A little rest and it sounds like you're fully recovered. I'm sure your brother will be relieved. He and your dad are out checking our destination planet for now, but he was pretty worried about you!"

My heart plummets. "What? He's awake?" 

Busy updating the tablet chart, she nods. "Yep. His pod hadn't been cued for revival yet when the Hyperion hit that anomaly. Lucky him, that could've caused some real damage! But you weren't in any shape to go anywhere and the Pathfinder was insistent on leaving immediately." 

Fuck.

"Yeah, okay. You mind if I go?" 

Betsy waves me away with a polite smile. I get to Sara's feet in their heavy new sneakers and walk out of the medical bay. 

It's all so bright, so new. And in a way, so ordinary. A spaceship, staffed by people, recently woken from centuries of deep freeze, and there's a table of plastic-wrapped burritos with a sign saying _**please take ONE**_. The packaging has stickers alongside the ingredient labels, declaring LEVO or DEXTRO. I have to rack my memory before I pick up a LEVO-stickered one.

An asari (an alien! sapient and nonhuman!) is kneeling on the floor, drilling the wall down the corridor. She's got a lilac burn blister peeking out from under her elbow-length gloves and a blue bandage on her cheek that doesn't match her deep indigo skin. Half a burrito is resting on her open tool bag. The wrapper also has a LEVO sticker, which makes me feel absurdly pleased for remembering right.

No one stops me from walking, turning corners deeper into the ship, away from footsteps and machinery and helpful, friendly, ordinary people. 

There are plants even in these lonely hallways. They must have been planted and grown by robots, or maybe a skeleton crew double-checking the ship while the rest of the people slept. Only a few are familiar. Daylilies, bamboo, the odd azalea. Some green shrubby things that might be potatoes.

I smell the flowers before I see them, on a wax privet bursting with white blossoms. There's a bench tucked in an alcove behind it. I slump into the seat, stare at my food for a moment, and give up. 

I'm dead. I remember dizzily losing my grip on awareness, even while I kept thinking about trying to look for my phone again, trying to find a charge cord, trying to do… something. Anything. I _died_ before I woke up here, I didn't just lose consciousness one final time and have vivid dreams. I really did die, aged thirty, alone on the bathroom floor. 

I worked a desk job one budget trim away from being eliminated. I spoke to no one, spent my lunch breaks asleep in my car. I wore sweaters to work where the air conditioning left me shivering, and when I left I peeled off layers until I could lock my door at home and strip naked in the unrelenting summer heat. I was so hungry all the time. I ate peanut butter or pasta or beans and at night I dreamed of grilled salmon and salads and fruit. If anyone opened my rental's door, it would have been my landlord, checking on my unpaid bills. 

I didn't believe in an afterlife. Still don't. I'm in a video game's spaceship, reading the ingredients on a burrito, and I just feel… blank. An emotional dial tone. 

I'm not even the protagonist. I fucked that up and now I'm the _spare_.

Well. At least I probably get free healthcare. And I don't have to pay rent. 

I unwrap my burrito and take a bite. Caramelized onions, black beans, cheese, pork, and spices. Food first. Existential crisis later.


	3. Biometrics

My watch vibrates. I cram the last bite of my lunch in my mouth as the band vibrates again with an urgent _bibibeep_. When I try to lick some stray sauce off my left hand, a holographic display unfolds over my arm and nearly jabs me in the eye. 

_INCOMING CALL | **Florence Hayes**_ , it reads, followed by an alphanumeric string formatted like a phone number. There's also a headshot of a woman I don't recognize, captioned 'pilot'. 

Vibrate. _Bibibeep_. 

I have to take a moment to marvel at how cool this technology--my omnitool--is. Smartphone, wallet, and lockpick in one slick package. The interface is easier to read than I had imagined, too. 

I poke the 'answer' button gently. The surface is solid but fragile, like a bubble of glass. A password prompt fills the screen.

Well, that's a problem. 

Vibrate, _bibibeep_.

There's an option for 'biometric pass key.' Touching it asks for my password again. God damn it, why couldn't Sara be lazy?

Vibrate, _bibibeep_. 

Some things are universal: there's a tiny 'forgot password?' button in a bottom corner. Tapping it reveals I don't know Sara Ryder's childhood pet, first kiss, or favorite food.

Vibrate, _bibibeep_.

I unstrap my omnitool and check the back. Unfortunately Sara is not the kind of person who tapes the password to the underside. I tell myself to be grateful I'm not the protagonist of a horror puzzle game like Prey or Soma.

As I fasten it back on my arm, there's a sad little descending beep tone. _**MISSED CALL**_ , says the screen.

Hayes, pilot. A pilot, calling me... oh, shit.

I bet Habitat 7's mission has gone to hell. And since I'm not actually in a coma or jump-jetting around in Habitat 7's shitty atmosphere… 

My omnitool vibrates. _INCOMING CALL | **Florence Hayes**_ again. This time I tap 'ignore'. 

I can see a map on the wall at the next hallway junction. Well, a slick 3D display of the _Hyperion_ 's layout with helpful icons showing elevators and stairs and bathrooms. Some poking around gives me a 'fastest route to' option with a line between me and the shuttle bay. A pop-up with 'upload to omnitool?' blinks mockingly at me.

If I run, which in Sara Ryder's top-of-the-line military body I could probably do _really fast_ , I could make it to the shuttle bay in less than five minutes. And I'd totally do that if Scott's already been picked up and just needs sisterly support while he recovers from brief clinical death in SAM Node.

Problem is, I don't know how long I'd been sedated for in the cryo bay after I wigged out the medical technicians. If this is a rescue mission, that would mean putting on jetpack-enabled future armor and picking up a gun, neither of which I know how to use. I don't even remember if there was a rescue mission. All I remember is that Hayes was the pilot who scooped up Pathfinder Ryder, still wearing her father's N7 helmet. 

I stare at the map. 

My omnitool vibrates. No beeps. This time the screen says _NEW EMAIL | **Florence Hayes** | SUBJECT: Habitat 7_. No further text is visible without a password. 

I close the omnitool's display window. Then I set out at a walk on the path to the shuttle bay.

Plausible deniability. I'm going the right way. No way for Sara Ryder to know just how pear-shaped things have gone, right? She'll be focused on how stupid forgetting her password was (please god let someone be able to reset it for me). Mister N7 Pathfinder Dad and her brother couldn't have come to harm, definitely don't need help from someone who'd had to be sedated after waking up from cryo gibbering nonsense. To her knowledge this is just a polite check-in, maybe a request to report for duty unpacking or something. 

I start mentally rehearsing excuses. Yes, I was so confused after cryo, I just wanted to get out of everyone's way. Silly me, lost track of time. How stupid, how careless, especially since I forgot my password. 

A staticky chime pops inside the back of my head, jolting my every nerve ending into panic and my hands into clamping over my ears. "Ryder, do you require assistance?"

"Jesus CHRIST! I forgot about you!" My hands shake as I lower them from their attempt to belatedly lock out a mind-control slug. _I'm_ the only body snatcher here. 

SAM--well, Diet SAM, the version people who aren't Pathfinder Ryder get--says, "My apologies for startling you. Your medical file indicated that a minimum of additional stimulus would be wise until you had fully recovered from cryogenic disorientation."

I can add 'medically mandated rest' to my list of excuses. "You are completely correct. Um. Hi."

"Hello. Ryder, do you require assistance?"

I'm coming up on another intersection in the corridor. I smell smoke again, the burnt-plastic kind. Looks like I'm on track to reach the shuttle bay in five or ten minutes. 

"Do you know my omnitool's password?"

The password prompt screen pops open. "I can make some guesses. One moment, please."

SAM switches to the 'forgot password' window. Logical. Probably these are easier to guess... oh, that's fucking funny. Sara had filled in 'childhood pet' as 'Scott Ryder'. Not very secure, maybe, but funny. 

"You may reset your password." 

"You're a treasure." I have to stop to type; I'm not very practiced with this keyboard layout. There's extra characters in it. My first couple passwords are too short, too. _‘Ryder? I hardly KNEW er’_ eventually gets accepted. 

"Hey, SAM, I only have to type this in if I turn it off manually, right?" 

"Correct, Ryder." 

Deep breath. "You can't actually read my mind, right? I have to talk to you. You learn through, like, experiences. My eyeballs and what I actually vocalize and stuff."

"Correct. Your mental privacy is assured."

Oh thank you sweet fancy Moses. I can’t deal with people _knowing_ I stole someone’s body. Not yet. Not ever, hopefully, assuming I live.

I get back to walking. I pass by more people now, in cryo pod rooms or trailing along to the main arteries of the ship like me. It takes effort not to stare at a salarian in passing. _Very_ alien looking, those hands, the elongated skull streaked with gray-green. The huge liquid eyes, which definitely give me a suspicious glare. Oops.

“Are you looking for someone?” SAM asks. 

“I’m just really nosy,” I tell SAM, and then belatedly realize I’m turned to look right at a human man with two black eyes and a spill of drying blood down his shirt when I say it. He glares at me. I point at my head and tell him, “Not you!” which doesn’t seem to improve his mood.

“I’m terrible at whispering. Subvocalizing,” I correct. This is going to be a worse learning curve than trying to pick up Mac usage after a lifetime of PCs. SAM has to think Sara is beyond stupid. The alternative, however, is him knowing the real problem. “If it’s not urgent, can you just text me?” 

“I can.” His pleasant machine calm does not reassure me. “If you have any questions for utilizing me most efficiently, simply ask.” 

I'm afraid to ask, though. Afraid he'll see I'm… incorrect. Not-Sara. My own body might betray me, with its nervous heart rate and the eyes that widen in awe at every non-human and eezo-powered tool.

I need to be busy. I open up my omnitool and check that email. 

_FROM: **Florence Hayes**  
SUBJECT: Habitat 7_

_Ryder:_

_Nobody can reach you so I'm just sending a message. The mission didn't go well. Return ETA 12 minutes. Scott's with us but unconscious. Alec Ryder didn't make it._

_I'm so sorry._

_\--F. Hayes_


	4. Nerve Damage

A little ways before I reach SAM Node, someone flags me down, a man in armor.

I double-take. It’s Liam Kosta, in the flesh, a character made alive, and it’s incredibly unnerving seeing him in three dimensions. He’s armored still and inches taller than me in my soft little sneakers. When he sees me, his face turns grim in a bracing-himself way.

It clicks. I hurry to tell him, "I heard already, Hayes sent me a note. I, uh. I know what happened. You're clear."

He heaves a long sigh. "I'm so sorry, Ryder. Sara," he corrects, and frowns.

Right, he's going to be working with two Ryders. "I also answer to Hey You and Ryder Number One."

Liam gives me a weak smile. Up close he smells like stone dust and something stinging, like acid. The Habitat 7 atmosphere, maybe, or those dark smears on his knees and elbow that might be kett gore. He’s so _young_ , and he looks so tired, and I badly want to sit him down with a snack and a cup of tea.

"Can I give you a hug?" 

"Best not. Don't know what's in the alien blood and dirt on me. I shouldn't have come this far in still dressed, really." He pulls a prickly scrap of vegetation out from an armored shoulder joint. "Wasn't thinking. I should go back, scrub all this off."

There's probably nothing I can say that would help right now. "Take care," I offer. "Thanks for doing your best."

He doesn't say anything, only trudges off down the hall. I’ve now successfully met one main character while completely sober and aware and managed not to blow my cover or embarrass myself. 

I rub my hands over my scalp stubble again. Sara's twin brother is grieving their father. To his knowledge, I'm his only living family. (Oh, yeah, we have Popsicle Mom somewhere. I need to take some notes.)

The Ryder twins actually _like_ each other, I remind myself. They're good people. Scott wouldn't hit his sister or threaten to torture her to death if she was annoying. He won't even have questions that body-snatcher me can't answer. He just needs a hug. Probably. The Ryders might not be huggers. 

I still have to brace myself to knock on the door to SAM Node. "Want me to come in?" I call out. Too late, I notice the little screen interface at the door that looks like an intercom.

Long pause. "Yeah." 

His voice doesn't sound like my own brother's. Gentler, clearer. 

SAM Node is smaller than it looked in game. Narrow. More like a server room than a spooky little quest hub. There's a rolling tool cart in a corner, and a stool, but Scott's just sitting on the floor. His elbows are on his knees, head propped up in one hand. Alec Ryder's N7 helmet sits near his feet.

Scott's nails are painted too. White, with a diagonal double stripe of black and robin's egg blue. Initiative colors, like mine, but fancier. 

I sit down next to him, just barely not touching. He doesn't so much as glance at me.

"Wanna talk about it?" I ask.

Scott shakes his head. He scoots to bump into my shoulder. 

Okay. Well. This is fine. 

More silence. I am uncomfortably aware that I got bashed into the floor by a cryo pod this morning. 

"Do you want me to be distracting or quiet?"

He gives me a look. "Quiet."

"Got it." Dammit.

From this angle I can't see his awful neckbeard. Just the back of his head. Dark hair, about an inch of it, as precisely cut as if he'd gotten a trim that morning. 

In terms of subjective time, he might have. Maybe he'd helped Sara shave her head down to a fine layer of dark fuzz, too. Did she paint his nails?

He sighs. "You heard what Dad did?"

"Jackass." It slips out before I can think about it. "I'm sorry, I just--"

"No, jackass is right," says Scott. "I'm Pathfinder. And he didn't tell me anything about it." 

Also, Alec Ryder locked a bunch of important information under a layer of bullshit checkpoints and your mom is deep frozen under an assumed name. 

"Classic Dad," I say instead. 

Scott leans forward, fingers stretching towards the discarded helmet. A wisp of blue light shimmers around his hands and the helmet throws itself into his grasp.

Real life magic! So fucking cool. Unreal, just effortless in its simplicity. 

Oh god. _I'm biotic too_. 

I have no idea how it works. I need to do research. And plan excuses. And figure out what exactly my job duties are with Alec Ryder gone and Sara’s brother in his stead. And write down plot points to maximize people not getting dead while minimizing my chances of being outed as an imposter. 

Also, I have to pee.

Desperate measures. I yank the helmet away and set it firmly out of his line of sight. 

"Hey!"

"You should take a shower and eat something," I tell him. "I'm older, I know these things."

Scott huffs. "Don't you have a cryo-induced head injury? Your doctor messaged a report before we left. We were worried about you."

"Yeah, and I'm still smarter than you." I hop up to my feet (it is _so nice_ being a fit twentysomething) as an excuse to get out of punching range. When he doesn't get up, I hold out a hand. And promptly accidentally yank too hard and just about tip us both over, because Sara is buff. 

"Situational awareness training,” I tell Scott. "Food, shower, rest. That's an order."

He scowls, balls up a fist, and punches me in the shoulder. I cover my flinch with a squawk of indignation and flee SAM Node. 

An announcement over the intercom: “ _Estimated arrival to Nexus in ninety minutes._ ”

\---

I ignore the bustling Hyperion workers in order to find a bathroom. One is in a hall cordoned off for Scourge damage. The next two are at max occupancy (frankly I suspect stress-fucking or private sobbing breakdowns, not that I blame them.) Finally I manage to claim one for myself. 

The stalls are large, krogan-sized, and the doors go all the way down, thank god. None of this cheap 'huge visible gaps in the undersized stall' business. 

The toilets have different settings for different species. Changing them rearranges the height and seat angle and makes something whirr down in the pipes. Neat. 

Peeing is its own revelation. Namely, Sara Ryder waxes _everything_. Or whatever the future equivalent of waxing is. There is absolutely no hair down there.

This is so weird that the moment I'm done I have to peel off the rest of my clothes immediately, narrowly avoiding shucking my shirt into the toilet. 

No leg hairs, no butt hairs, no nipple hairs. Sara doesn't even have toe hairs on her pedicured feet. I can't tell how much of it is futuristic hair removal and how much is genetics. I might not ever know unless it's just basic waxing and it all starts to grow back in a week.

If it does, I'm letting it. Her-body-that-is-my-body is foreign enough to me already without her shaved bare as a bowling alley.

My throat is tight, eyes hot. I suck in oxygen, clench my teeth, do everything in my power to fight the tears. I'm dead, my life is gone, and I apparently fucked something up so bad that I bodysnatched a tertiary protagonist in a video game. A game _riddled with plot holes_ and involving a lot of combat with powers I don't know how to use. For fuck’s sake, I'm scared of guns!

Also deep water, hard vacuum, freefall, and arthropods of all sizes. I am so boned. 


	5. Chronostasis

The bathroom door pops open. 

I flinch in my stall, acutely aware of being stark naked for no reason in the middle of the day. I’m impersonating a _professional_ , I should be _working_ , and I’m obviously a fake, incorrect, an impostor, and someone is going to question me--

Of course, this is a bathroom with multiple stalls, but panic knows no logic. I shiver in place until I hear the stranger running the sink. 

My shaking hands fumble at my clothes. I can feel myself chilling, face and hands going numb and cold. Stress reaction. I used to get it when I got a bill I couldn’t afford, or a cop’s lights went off in my rearview mirror. 

Sara’s Andromeda Initiative clothing is fortunately such mass-produced uniform blandness that putting on her clothes makes me feel less like I’ve robbed someone. I scratch at my stubbly hair one more time, take a deep breath, and leave the stall. 

A dark-skinned woman around my age-- _my_ age, not Sara’s, thirty or so to my eye--is smoothing back her long, dark hair with wet hands. Her smile is dazzling. “Are you Sara Ryder?”

Pure reflex masks my genuine terror: “What did she do?”

“Hah! Good answer.” She ties off her ponytail with a flourish. “You missed the Pathfinder team check-in, so you’re working with me! I’m Lani Reed. Meet me outside and I’ll give you the reqs on the way down. Also, maybe check your omnitool notifications?” 

I must not look too much like I’m going to faint from nerves, because she leaves me to wash my hands without a backwards glance.

 _Oh god please don’t tell me I have to shoot something._ But Lani Reed is dressed just like me, soft but crisp tracksuit uniform with no armor and no guns. 

When my hands are clean, I skip the omnitool notifications (Scott Ryder, Scott Ryder, Cora Harper, Nozomi Dunn, oh _dear_ I’m in trouble) and just search the Initiative personnel database for ‘Lani Reed’. She’s listed as a pilot, certified to fly various acronyms that mean nothing to me, and a cargo handler rated for biologicals and research materials. 

I think being relegated to heavy lifting is supposed to be a rebuke for whatever I missed, but I’m just happy I won’t accidentally kill anyone while I’m occupied with an existential crisis. I hope.

Lani wastes no time. “We’re shifting preliminary cargo,” she tells me, setting the pace at a brisk trot. “We’re not doing a whole lot before the Nexus gives us their checklist, but as a first-wave load team we should be ready for anything. I appreciate Dunn letting me have you. It’s nice having a biotic on the ground in case of emergency--”

“Please do not have an emergency.”

She laughs. “I’ll try! Oh, we turn here, see the map--yes. And you know, you’re on the Pathfinder team, it makes things a little more official if there’s a big name there. And respectful. People sometimes think they can get first pick of the goods if they just show up, right? Having a Ryder around should smooth things out.” 

“I’m the spare Ryder,” I point out. We edge to the side of the wide corridor, careful of the gap in the floor where an access tunnel has been opened up. Someone within is describing a technical issue at colorful length. “I, uh, also had a head injury recently? So I can’t do the heavy machinery things, I’m really sorry.” 

Lani looks like she’s about to express something polite and concerned, and I badly need to change the subject before she asks me anything personal. “And you’re a pilot, aren’t you a little above this kind of thing?” 

“But I wanted to be first wave, so it’s not enough to be a pilot,” she says. “Even a very good one. You have to be multidisciplinary. I grew up on a farm, I had experience with heavy loaders and biological cargo handling, it wasn’t too difficult to re-qualify for everything.”

We step out into the open breadth of a Hyperion atrium. As she tells me her dreams to retire on a rice farm, I try to keep my attention from wandering, but the vast space is distracting.

The game displayed something like a fancy mall. An airy space, dotted with foliage and trees. Reality at human eye level is even more striking: a riotous array of shrubs, vines, grasses, trees, growing things of all sizes and colors, all of which look as if they’ve been tossed in the air and fallen wrong. It smells like wet grass and welding fumes.

Every direction has people in now-filthy Initiative clothes frantically _doing something_ , whether it’s replanting a row of berry bushes or using a futuristic shop-vac on the water spreading across the floor. The face of a fish tank across the atrium is jaggedly striped with tape, the water level down by about a third. 

“At least we’re gonna have a nice meal tonight,” Lani remarks. 

“What?”

She gestures at the empty spaces in a replanted island of grasses and trees. No dirt visible, only some kind of mesh or foam. “Almost everything here is edible until the Initiative gets established. Anything we can’t replant, we’ll freeze or eat.” 

Her face is calm, pleasantly anticipatory. I think of the thousands who were promised golden worlds and now scrabble to dodge starvation and decide not to say anything. 

The conversation peters out. We step aboard a tram and Lani taps our destination on the display: _Nexus-Hyperion Cargo Bay_. As the tram accelerates, I sit down a couple seats away from her and open up my omnitool’s messages. 

> **From** : Scott Ryder
> 
> **Subject** : Nexus meet & greet
> 
> Locker room in 20. Full kit, weapon included. Communications with the Nexus are sporadic, we want to make it clear we’re prepared. 

  
  
  


> **From** : Scott Ryder
> 
> **Subject** : Nexus??
> 
> Where are you? If you’re not here in 10 we’ll get going without you. 

  
  


Timestamp: way more than ten minutes ago. I resist the urge to immediately write some kind of apology and resolve to track him down later.

  
  


> **From** : Cora Harper
> 
> **Subject** : Punctuality
> 
> Allegiance to the task and the team must be one. A true team allows no task to divide them, and no task can be achieved by breaking the team’s unity of purpose. 
> 
> \-- Huntress Sarissa

  
  


Oh, passive-aggression, wonderful. I entertain a very petty daydream of tracking down anything Sarissa Explains It All has to say about insubordination or maybe not being a dick to your squadmates and sending it back. 

Lani is giving my grimace a side-eye over her screen. I remind myself that it’s been a horrible day for everybody and move on to the final message. 

> **From** : Nozomi Dunn
> 
> **Subject** : New duties
> 
> The Pathfinder team has left you at my disposal; I’m sending you to the cargo loader team. Reed will be responsible for you until the Pathfinder says otherwise. 
> 
> I’m sorry for your loss. If you need a medical exemption from immediate labor duties, don’t hesitate to speak to medical staff. Otherwise, please be on time. 

  
  


Businesslike, but not unkind. It hurts the most. 

The tram dings. Lani says, “We’re here.”

The cargo bay is a vast low-ceilinged warehouse of shipping containers. I remember my face-first encounter with a cryo pod and stick close behind Lani. 

“Yuei!” she calls, “I brought a gopher along. One of the Ryder kids!” 

The squat figure by a distant control panel, mostly visible as coveralls and a hard hat, flicks a hand in what might be a wave before they go back to scrolling through their omnitool.

“Yuei’s not a talker,” Lani whispers. “I’ve been getting messages from them the whole time, though--they keep getting garbage data from the hookup with the Nexus, and they won’t open up until they’re sure it’s safe.”

My deathly terror of suffocation, previously restricted to nightmares involving submarines, tightens my voice to a squeak as I tell her, “I appreciate their hard work.”

“I’m telling Yuei that, they’ll be so happy someone higher on the ladder isn’t hurry-hurry about the schedule.” She checks her omnitool. “Ah, Yuei reminded me: this is how you scan cargo.”

It turns out I actually do have a job besides talking to hypothetical Nexus bureaucrats. There’s a precise grid of crates stacked by the cargo bay wall. Lani keys me in to the Nexus program that tracks inventory and shows me how to wave my omnitool next to the future’s version of a barcode.

Once I’ve got the hang of it, she bounces off to an alcove with a set of forklift mecha suits. One of them is upright, indicator lights alive; the other five are dark and folded down into what looks like a charging station.

“What a nice boy,” she says, examining the lit-up one, “he set it all up for me.” 

Then she turns to peer out into the maze of containers, behind me and my crates, where another forklift-mecha bot is carrying a load our way. “Dutch!” she bellows, “thank you very much for unlocking the heavy loader! I see nothing’s exploded!”

“Yeah, well, give it time!” yells the driver. Dutch is a human man, pale, scowling ferociously, sweat beading on his bald head. His machine sets down his crate very precisely square with the dozen or so already present near the wall. 

On closer inspection, this wall is actually a door. There’s a number of ominous warnings about seals and atmosphere and locating emergency shutdown levers, repeated in several languages down the whole face. 

I skitter back. Lani, still getting situated in the driver’s seat of the mecha, doesn’t even look in my direction. 

The Nexus, I remember, is in absolutely garbage shape by the time the Hyperion hooks up with it. I’m not the Pathfinder, entering the Nexus atrium with future squad members; I’m the comatose spare with a handful of NPCs moving some luggage. 

Maybe I can make myself scarce before--

The door hums. Lights flare to life, bright flashing warnings, and a screen in the wall reads _INITIATING CONNECTION._

Dutch’s heavy loader has departed for more supplies and Lani looks mostly focused on the controls of her machine, but Yuei is plodding back in our direction, scrolling through their omnitool with half an eye on the door. If I break for an exit, I’ll be seen. 

A pneumatic hiss in the door. The warning lights change. I suck in a breath, hold it like it’ll mean something--

But the doors are retracting, and there isn’t so much as a breeze. Okay. I won’t die breathless and writhing in agony. Sara Ryder’s sensitive nose picks up burnt plastic and sweaty laundry smells as the doors reveal the dim cavern of the Nexus cargo area, a shadowed world of emergency lights that barely illuminates empty crates and scorched floors.

And people. A handful of humans squinting against the brightness of the _Hyperion_ at full power, frozen and watchful like we were hungry demons, or a mirage. No one’s in armor, but a couple of them are holding power tools in a way that suggest they’re ready for messier work than ship repair.

I step up closer to the doorway, cute and short and unarmed in my crisp uniform, and wave. “Welcome from the _Hyperion_. I’m Ryder, like the Pathfinder. I’m, uh, I’m supposed to talk to whoever’s in charge of resupply?”

Being the focus of all those eyes turns the end of my question into a mumble. No one speaks, they only shift their stances, darting looks at each other. Out the corner of my eye I can see Lani walking her heavy loader closer to me. I take another step closer, trying to project friendly harmlessness.

“I’ve got a list.”

The unseen speaker is turian. Feminine, I think, but not Vetra’s voice. Deep, inhuman, more than a little spooky. 

In the darkness behind the cluster of Nexus humans, I see movement. Several turian figures straighten up or move to the side into better light. 

Oh fuck, those are big. And really _not human,_ they don’t move right, and the turian coming forward is in pale armor that probably weighs as much as I do, with a gun in their unnatural-looking grasp, and now that the shock of replacing a side character is wearing off a little, the aliens are starting to really freak me out. 

The turian’s raptor pupils are narrowed to pinpoints, sharp enough to fix me in place like a beetle on a card. “Status report,” she growls, “What’s the situation on the Hyperion?”

I tear my eyes away to look around the spotless _Hyperion_ cargo bay. “We’re fine?”

Scattered snickers. My face burns hot. “I think we’re late,” I add. “Um. The Scourge kinda scuffed things up. Alec Ryder rebooted Habitat 7--”

My turian questioner’s eyes and mandibles go wide, which looks _very_ threatening from a short human’s eye level. 

“--it’s hard to explain and I think the Pathfinder is gonna do that. Can I go do inventory?”

The turian huffs with the rattle of a frustrated velociraptor. “Fine. I’m Lieutenant Sajax,” she says. “It’s good to see an ark after all this time. As far as supplies go, we need everything edible you’ve got. We’ll need guards first, though--people are desperate right now. Where’s your supervisor?” 

“I’m here!” Lani side-steps her heavy loader to come closer to the Nexus people without appearing to charge at them. “I’ll take over from here, Sara, you can just work on scanning.”

I give Lani a wave, exchange a nod with Sajax, and scurry away to the furthest end of the waiting crates.

I’ve had my first close encounter of the turian kind. I’m pretty sure I failed it. 


End file.
